The Last Train to Silver Hollow

I was elbow deep in a Swiss bracket clock when the bell over the door rang. I didn't look up. Customers at Owens's Antiques in December are mostly browsers, and browsers don't need eye contact.

"Help you?" I said to the movement. Gus says I talk to clocks more than people. He's not wrong.

"Actually, I was hoping you could help me."

I looked up. She was standing by the door, shaking snow off a gray coat. Tall. Maybe thirty-two. Dark hair cut short, cheeks pink from the cold. She had the kind of face that looked like it laughed a lot.

"Nicki," I said, wiping my hands on a rag. "You looking to buy or sell?"

"Neither. Yet. I'm looking to hire." She walked past the display of mantel clocks like they were furniture in a waiting room. Most people stop. They ooh. They pick things up and I have to say please don't. She didn't. She came straight to my workbench and looked at what was in my hands.

"That's a 1910 Jaquet movement," she said. "Quarter strike?"

I blinked. "Yeah. How do you know that?"

"My boss collects them. I've spent enough evenings in his study to tell a Jaquet from a Limonaire at ten feet." She smiled. "Ari, by the way."

"Ari what?"

"Just Ari for now!" She pulled off her gloves. Her hands were warm looking, long fingers. "I need something built. Something custom. Is that the kind of thing you do?"

"Depends on the something."

"A big one. Mechanical. Moving parts, visible gears, the works. It's for a theater production. I do sets." She said it fast, like she'd rehearsed it in the car. "I saw your name on the carnival flyer. The restoration booth. I figured if you can fix a carousel organ you can build me a thing."

"The carnival flyer's three years old," I said. "That booth died when the carnival did."

"Betty at the pharmacy says you still take work."

"Betty talks too much."

"Betty talks exactly enough. She pointed me here."

I put down the rag. Here's what nobody tells you about being good at a dead niche: you get lonely. Half my income is watch batteries. The other half is rich guys who want their grandfather's cuckoo clock to sing again. Nobody walks in needing a real build.

"Show me what you need," I said.

"I don't have drawings yet. Can I come back?"

"Shop's open till six. Most days. Gus, my boss, he locks up when I say."

"Saturday?"

"Saturday."

She wrote her number on the back of a receipt. The paper was warm from her pocket. "I'm Ari," she said again, like I'd missed it the first time. "It was nice to meet you, Nicki."

Then she was gone and the bell rang and I stood there holding a receipt that smelled like cold air and something green, like pine maybe.

I went back to the Jaquet. I did not go back to the Jaquet. I thought about a woman who knew a quarter strike at ten feet and didn't ooh at clocks.

* * *

Saturday she came back at noon with a roll of paper under her arm and coffee for two. She got my order right. Black, no sugar. I never told her my order. Gus probably, from last week, when she'd apparently called the shop first. Sneaky.

"Okay." She unrolled the paper across my bench, right over the Jaquet parts. I let her. That's how you know I liked her already. "This is the set for the second act. The play has a clock tower that comes alive. It cracks open and a figure climbs out and walks downstage. The whole thing has to run on a crank, no electricity, because the blackout happens right before."

I leaned over the sketch. It was good. Better than good. She'd drawn the escapement right.

"You drew a real escapement," I said.

"I did my homework. Don't laugh at the proportions."

"I'm not laughing. These proportions are actually..." I traced the figure with a finger. "Who's the figure supposed to be?"

"Time. The play is about a woman who bargains with Time. It's dumb. It's very dumb. But the dumb ones sell tickets." She grinned at me. "So. Can you build her?"

"Yes," I said, and then heard myself. "I mean. Yes, probably. I'd need three months and real money for brass."

"There's a budget. My producer hates me but there's a budget." She stuck out her hand. We shook. Her grip was firm and her palm was warm and I let go too fast like an idiot.

"Come by Tuesday," I said. "We'll talk materials."

"Can't. Tuesday I'm painting. Wednesday?"

"Wednesday."

She paused at the door on her way out. "You know, you didn't ask my last name again. Most people push."

"I'll get it when I need to invoice you."

"That's cold, Nicki."

"That's business."

She laughed all the way down the steps. I watched her through the window until she turned the corner. Then I told the Jaquet clock she was trouble. It ticked back at me, noncommittal.

* * *

The theater was in the old Masonic hall on Delancey, third floor, no elevator. I hauled my sample gears up forty steps and arrived sweating in the dead of winter, which felt illegal.

"Up here!" Ari's voice came down the stairwell. "Follow the mess!"

The set shop took up the whole floor. Canvas flats everywhere, paint spatter on everything, a radio playing something with horns. Ari was on a ladder in paint-stained overalls, cutting the top off a ten foot column with a knife.

"You came," she said, climbing down. "Half of me thought you'd bail."

"I took a deposit."

"The other half of me hoped you'd come anyway." She wiped her hands on a rag that had given up being a rag. "Okay. This is the space. The tower goes there. The audience is there. Sightlines are garbage, the balcony blocks half the stage, and the director wants magic. Hence you."

I walked the space. Measured with my eyes. I do that. Gus says I measure doorways at parties.

"Balcony kills the top third," I said. "Figure needs to come out at chest height, not full tower. Or you fly her, and flying costs more than me."

"See, this is why I called you." She hopped off the last step. "Everybody else quoted me some spinning cylinder garbage. You actually looked."

"Everyone else was wrong."

"Everyone else was lazy. You're not lazy. You're..." She looked around for the word. "Meticulous. In a scary way. I like it."

"Thanks. I think."

"It's a compliment. I'm from the theater, we don't do subtle." She pulled two folding chairs together and we sat and I spread drawings on a paint table and for two hours it was just work, good work, the kind where the other person keeps up. She argued about the crank ratio and she was right. I hate when people are right. Not this time, though. This time it felt like a relief.

We broke around five. She walked me to the stairs.

"So," she said, leaning on the rail. "Can I ask a personal question?"

"Depends."

"Are you seeing anyone? Because I've been in town three weeks, and the only person I've wanted to have a drink with works in a clock shop, and I'd like to know if I'm wasting my Thursdays."

I stopped on the first step. She was a step above me so we were almost eye to eye.

"You're asking me out."

"I'm asking if I can ask you out. There's a difference. Consent and all that." She smiled, but her ears were a little pink. "Also, full disclosure, since we're doing disclosure: I'm gay. Very gay. Embarrassingly gay. I tell people early so nobody's surprised later."

"I'm gay too," I said. Fast. Faster than I meant to. "I mean. Yeah. Also."

"Also." She laughed. "Wow. We're terrible at this."

"I'm not terrible at this. I'm out of practice. I've spent most of the last six years with dead people's clocks."

"So I'm a hermit and you're new in town. Drink Thursday?"

"I have to deliver a regulator Thursday."

"Friday?"

"...Friday."

She opened her mouth and I put my hand up.

"One condition. Friday you tell me your last name. I can't build a three thousand dollar mechanism for a woman named Ari."

"Friday," she said. "It's a deal."

* * *

Friday we went to the cafe on Corliss Street, the one with the mismatched chairs. She wore the same gray coat. She ordered tea, which I made fun of, and she made fun of my black coffee right back, so we were even.

"Vance," she said, sitting down. "Ari Vance. Last name, as promised. Now. Nicki. Tell me about you. Where are you from originally?"

"Two towns over. You wouldn't know it."

"Parents around?"

"Dad's half an hour away. Mom passed when I was twenty-four." I said it flat. I've practiced flat.

"I'm sorry."

"It was a while ago. Seven years." I stirred my coffee. "Your turn. Family?"

"None that speak to me. Long story, boring, next question." She said it lightly but not that lightly. I let it go. "Okay, your turn again. Last relationship?"

"Here we go."

"Here we go. I showed you mine, sort of."

"Three years ago. A violinist. It ended the way those end. She toured, I didn't." I shrugged. "Your turn. Last relationship?"

"A stage manager in Chicago. It ended the way those end. She stayed, I left." She drank her tea. "We're both disasters. Great."

"We're not disasters. We're just..." I looked for the word. "Guarded."

"Guarded. Sure. You know what I've noticed about you in two weeks?"

"Enlighten me."

"You answer every question with a fact. Never a feeling. Where are you from, a town. Family, a fact. Relationships, a number of years." She leaned her elbows on the table. "You build walls out of data, Nicki. It's very impressive and I see right through it."

"That's rude."

"That's theater people. We do feelings out loud, it's obnoxious, you'll get used to it." She was grinning. "So deflect all you want. I've got time. I'm very patient. I couriered a Faberge egg across three state lines once. Took me five months. Nobody even knew I had it."

"That's illegal, probably."

"It was extremely legal. Mostly. The point is, patience." She reached across and turned my coffee cup so the handle faced my right hand. A small thing. Nobody does small things for me. "So. One real answer. Anything. Not a fact."

I sat there. The cafe noise went on around us. Somewhere behind the counter a grinder screamed.

"I don't like being seen," I said finally. "People look at me and they see the clock girl, the weird one, the one who's good with her hands and bad with words. And it's easier to just be that. So I am. That's my real answer. It's not a fact and I hate it."

Ari didn't say oh baby or any of that. She just nodded, slow, like I'd handed her a gear she'd been missing.

"Thank you," she said. "That's the first honest thing you've said."

"Don't get used to it."

"Too late." She finished her tea and stood, dropping money on the table before I could reach for it. "I'll come by the shop next week. The frame's on your bench, and I want to meet it."

"Meet it."

"You'll understand when you see her. I've named her already. You'll hate that."

"I already hate it," I said, and she laughed, and I walked home in the snow thinking that maybe, maybe, Thursday wasn't the only thing I'd been wasting.

The next week I opened the workshop at six, same as always. She showed up at nine with two coffees and a paper bag of something that smelled like cinnamon. She knocked anyway. She always knocks.

"Delivery," she said, holding up the bag. "Donuts. Bribery."

"Accepted." I wiped my hands and let her in.

The frame for the tower sat on the big bench. I'd been up until two the night before fitting the escapement. It looked good. I knew it looked good and I still felt weird when she looked at it, like she was reading my diary over my shoulder.

"Her name is Cordelia," Ari said.

"You said I'd hate that."

"You hate it?"

"...I don't hate it."

She grinned and set the donuts down next to my coffee, which was already next to the screwdriver set, and we both reached for the same little jeweler's driver. Her hand